Fragments of bone found at a Vatican embassy could be a crucial clue in solving the mystery of 2 teen girls who went missing in 1983

Demonstrators hold pictures of Emanuela Orlandi during an event in St. Peter's Square in May 2012.Andrew Medichini/AP

The Vatican said on Tuesday that human bones were found during a renovation on its embassy to Italy, and that they are bringing in experts to determine the age and gender of the bones, and date of death.

While the Vatican didn't say who they suspect the bones to belong to, Italian media connected the case to the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican worker.

Orlandi disappeared after leaving her family's Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome.

The Vatican said Tuesday that human bones were found during renovation work near its embassy to Italy, reviving talk about one of the Holy See's most enduring mysteries — the fate of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who disappeared in 1983.

Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican worker, went missing in 1983.AP

In the latest twist in a case that has bedeviled investigators for 35 years, the Vatican said Rome's chief prosecutor had been called in and forensic investigators are working to determine the age and gender of the bones as well as the date of death.

The Vatican statement didn't mention the girl, Emanuela Orlandi, but Italian media immediately linked her unsolved disappearance to the discovery of the bones.

The news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains could be linked either to Orlandi, who disappeared on June 22 1983, or another 15-year-old girl, Mirella Gregori, who went missing a month earlier in Rome, on May 7, 1983.

The Orlandi and Gregori disappearances have never been formally linked.

The Vatican said merely that the bones were found during work near its Rome embassy in the upscale residential neighborhood of Parioli.

Orlandi disappeared after leaving her family's Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See.

Over the years, her case has been linked to everything from the plot to kill St. John Paul II to the financial scandal of the Vatican bank and Rome's criminal underworld.

The last major twist in the case came in 2012, when forensic police exhumed the body of a reputed mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica in hopes of finding Orlandi's remains as well. The search turned up no link.

More recently, a leading Italian investigative journalist caused a sensation when he published a five-page document last year that had been stolen from a locked Vatican cabinet that suggested the Holy See had been involved in Orlandi's disappearance.

The Vatican immediately branded the document a fake, though it never explained what it was doing in the Vatican cabinet.

The document was purportedly written by a cardinal and listed supposed expenses used for Orlandi's upkeep after she disappeared.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the Orlandi family pressed Italian prosecutors and the Vatican for more details on the bone fragments.

"We are asking Rome prosecutors and the Holy See by what means the bones were found and how their discovery was placed in relation to the disappearances of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori," lawyer Laura Scro said, adding that the Vatican statement "provides little information."